Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Ferdinand the seagull and my to-do list

-Write that history project during my free hour
-Talk to the philosophy teacher about my essay
-Eat an ananas
-Go home
-Find the bird
-Bury the bird, dig up in about three months' time
-Go home
-Keep writing the essay
-Procrastinate on CampNaNo because I somehow thought it would be a good idea to write a novel during the last month of school just before exams
-Become a giant wobbly octopus of despair, faceplant on my bedroom rug.
-Go to sleep

I like making to-do lists. They always make it look like you have accomplished something, even if that accomplishment is writing a to-do list.

Oh, the bird part? Yeah, I should probably explain that.

So I was going to school by bus when I look out the window and see this dead seagull lying by the mire by the side of the road, and thought 'this may be one of my few chances to get a complete skeleton for my bone collection!' So, having read the blog of the genius that is Jake, I decided that burying the cadaver would be the best method to get rid of all those fleshy bits I didn't need.

After school, I went to look for the bird, and since it happily hadn't been moved/ripped to bits/eaten in the time that I was away, it was whole enough for me to put in a plastic bag and find a handy place to bury it. I can't imagine what the drivers passing me must have been thinking, as I was standing there by the road with a bandana over my face, picking up freshly killed birds like some kind of an insane, would-be serial killer. Oh, and I did wear gloves. AND I washed my hands thoroughly afterwards. I'm not a complete idiot.

To be honest, it wasn't as icky as I thought it would be, although granted quite some time was spent by me poking it with a stick saying 'ew' a lot. Something had eaten away its chest so that the keel bone was visible, and its eyes had been pecked out, but other than that it wasn't too bad. It also wasn't very smelly since it had only been there a short time.

The tricky part was finding an appropriate place to bury it. Since I live in Iceland, the soil here is mostly volcanic ash and thus very light, and tends to become either very sandy or clay-like, which isn't good for burying as that usually ends up with the body mummified, which wasn't really my goal. Of course, I also had to avoid the seagull nesting site, since they normally become frisky around this time of year, and since I was carrying their dead buddy on top of that, well...

So after walking around the moss/lava fields (seriously, what is the English term for that?) I found a handy place by what may be an old mine and started digging. At one point I saw a girl walking her dog and could only pray to whatever entity that might be listening that she wouldn't come my way. So many questions to answer, so little time.

Also, that horrible moment when you are digging a temporary grave for a dead seagull and suddenly every High School Musical song starts playing in your head SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Awkward.

After mentioning this to my friends, I was the but of Vlad-the-Impaler jokes for some time, which I of course bore with dignity.

Ehem.
I then had a conversation with my Italian philosophy class friend, and I can't remember how we came to that conclusion, but the bird is now named Ferdinand, and I have been challenged to write a musical about him.

A musical about a zombie seagull named Ferdinand. I'm surprised that isn't already a thing.

Anyway, he should be bones alone by the end of July, which is when I will dig him up and clean up the bones and (hopefully) rearticulate him into a whole skeleton which I will then hang as decoration in my house.